


your grace falls down around me

by glitteratiglue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky was already the Winter Soldier when he fell, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, POV Second Person, Pining, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5559832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The man who pulls you off the table is Steve, and he is also not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your grace falls down around me

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the idea that Bucky was already well on his way to becoming HYDRA's weapon when Steve rescued him, and Steve not noticing all the things that are different about him, because Bucky's just that good at pretending.

The man who pulls you off the table is Steve, and he is also not.

He is your best friend, you would know him anywhere. He has Steve’s blue eyes and Steve’s sandy hair and Steve’s strong jaw. But he is tall, looming over you with hands like dinner plates and muscles like boulders. He rips away your bonds with ease, lifts you like you weigh nothing.

You cling to him, let his grace surround you, a blanket to chase away the chill that has settled in your bones.

He calls you Bucky. (You aren’t. Not anymore.)

The whole march back, he never leaves your side, as if he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he turns his back. He claps a hand on your arm and grins at you with white teeth. You are dazed and hollow, but you find it in yourself to smile back.

To you, Steve has always given his spun-sugar smiles so freely, but now he smiles at you like you are the flame in his sky. He looks at you and sees his pal from Brooklyn, the boy who laughs and teases without a care in the world. He doesn't know the truth.

Everything about you is wrong, and he doesn’t notice.

You are backwards, upside down. They ripped you apart and stitched you back together, and they didn’t do it right. You are eggshell, cracked open and brittle, and you hope to God nobody can see how broken you really are.

Back at camp, triumphant shouts echo in your ears, cheers for Captain America. You look at the red bow of Peggy Carter’s lips and the way she stares at your best friend, like he’s the missing puzzle piece that completes her heart. Bile rises in your throat; you swallow it back.

You are glad for Steve, that he is healthy now, free of the illnesses that have plagued him his entire life. Still, some part of you aches for the sharp bones and paper-thin wrists of the kid you grew up with. He was your Steve. This Steve belongs to others, and you aren’t sure how you feel about sharing him.

In the medical tent, the doctors examine you thoroughly. They clear you for duty, stamp the file in your hands and call you Sergeant Barnes.

This, at least, you understand. You are a soldier. Violence is your life, and you have lived and breathed it since you put on this uniform. In the end, it is what you know, and so you head for the rifle range. Sergeant Barnes is a sniper, a damn good one. The weapon’s weight is familiar in your hand. You don’t have to think about it. Your hands and the rifle are one, your clear eyes sighting down the barrel. You barely aim before you exhale. Make the shot. Exhale. Make the shot. And repeat.

Afterwards, you stare at a target filled with impeccable bullet holes, and your insides grow cold.

You were always good; you were never _this_ good. It terrifies you.

Your former cellmates call you a survivor, the luckiest punk in all creation. They slip you cigarettes and dirty postcards. You take the gifts and flash them your trademark grin in return, wide and easy and pure Brooklyn.

It makes Steve’s eyes soft to see you smile like that, so you do it again. And again. You smile until your teeth ache, until it’s the only thing you can remember how to do. If there’s one thing you know, it’s how to front.

Once, you’d joked about being in the pictures, the next Clark Gable or Cary Grant. You’d laughed about it with a cigarette between your lips, blowing smoke-rings on the stoop of your Brooklyn apartment. Your skinny best friend leaning back against your knees, paper and pencil in his deft hands while he sketched the skyline.

Now’s your chance. This is your role of a lifetime: Bucky Barnes, and you’re going to play it so goddamn well Steve won’t suspect a thing.

On a bar stool, you watch light slant onto Steve’s hair, a shimmering halo. You remind yourself he is worth all this. You promise to follow him anywhere, because you’ve never known anything different, and you aren’t about to start now. His face glows, and you force a grin onto your face while your heart cracks inside your chest. You tease him about the uniform, knock back drinks and try to forget you are wrong inside.

Much later, alone and staring into the bottom of a whiskey bottle, stone-cold sober, you are forced to admit defeat.

That night, you cry, because you _knew_ it. No matter what the doctors said, all the tests they did, you knew something inside you was utterly, completely wrong. Now you have the proof, and you keep it behind your tongue so the words won’t tumble out in front of Steve. You clench your jaw so hard it aches.

Across the battlefields of Europe, you follow your ragtag brothers and the man who was once just your best friend. Now he is a symbol, and you fight for him the way you once did in Brooklyn alleyways and parking lots.

Over a campfire one night, Morita calls you brave. You shrug your shoulders, cast your eyes down, play the bashful hero. You don’t think about the factory, how it took less than an hour on that cold metal slab before you screamed and sobbed and begged for death.

Steve’s eyes watch you in the firelight, his gaze burning like a touch on your skin. The pride in his eyes is so fierce you have to look away, your throat wet and tight.

You don’t deserve his admiration.

In so many ways, you are different now. As a child, your mother called you noisy; you hollered and thumped up and down the stairs in your boots, knocked over furniture playing Cowboys and Indians with Steve. You used to fidget, restless inside your own skin, tapping feet on the floor and humming.

These days you are still, can move without making a sound. Your rifle is steady in your hands; you hardly need to breathe.

You are not Bucky Barnes anymore.

You are a bird, the fragile wings of your heartbeat thrumming under your breastbone. Nothing but rattling bones and sallow skin. Sniper that you are, you perch in high places and use your deadly talents to pick off targets with ease. The worst things about you are now the things that keep Steve safe.

You are Sergeant Barnes. Captain America’s right-hand man. Gifted killer. You don’t know if you want to be any of those things.

Film crews come, and you stand at Steve’s side and pretend like you belong there. You know better. He is a hero, a saviour, and you are his fucked-up mirror image, the twisted echo of someone who was once a good man.

Out on watch, your hands shake and tremble. All the cigarettes in the world don’t make a difference.

You make impossible shots and everyone applauds you for it. You don’t tell them you barely had to try.

In a farmhouse in France, there's a room and a soft bed for once. Steve grins at you, very bright and you turn away, shame rising up like thick fog in your chest.

You lock yourself in the bathroom, stare at your face in the cracked mirror and see the red underneath, the invisible scars of a dead man walking.

You aren’t supposed to be here. But you are. And for him, you will stay.

Steve’s room is down the hall. You find him peeling off his uniform. He doesn’t pause upon seeing you — and why would he? This is the army, and you have seen each other naked more times than you could count on both hands.

There are scattered bruises on Steve’s back. He heals quickly, but here they are, fleeting reminders of his mortality. A scar at the base of his spine catches your eye. The serum has made Steve into carved marble, the model of human perfection, but you know this mark. It’s from before, carved by a vicious neighbourhood bully with a knife. Steve’s mother had sewn up the wound with small, neat stitches, but it has left a white shadow on his skin; a memory.

You stare at it, feeling your pulse quicken. You remember the things you used to want, back when your best friend was small enough to fit into your arms. Thin skin stretched tight over bones and sharp ribs that poked you when you slept in a narrow bed with him for warmth. You pretended not to want him, but you did, with every fibre of your being and every beat of your weak, traitorous heart.

Underneath it all, he is still your Steve.

Your throat is closing up. You want to touch him; you ball your hands into fists at your sides so you won't try. Steve gives you a trusting smile; he has no idea what you’re thinking. You wrench your gaze away and head for the door.

You are a killer, but it is not the only thing that is wrong with you.

In the mornings, the Commandos yawn, grumble about lack of sleep and shitty coffee and no women. You join in sometimes, but mostly, you are quiet.

You think about how you can’t get drunk and the perfect, perfect shots you make and the way you feel rested on three hours of sleep a night. You think about the sick, terrible way you want your best friend, and all the words you keep between your teeth so they won’t slip out.

(You don’t think about Steve’s steel-cut jaw, the mountains of his chest. You don’t think about his hands, big but still delicate from years of wearing pencils down to the stub. With those hands, Steve could draw you. He could paint you, leave a masterpiece of marks and scars and bruises on your skin: red, white and blue. You want him to. You want him so badly it chokes you, leaves you awake and shivering while Steve sleeps on the bedroll next you. You curl fingernails into your palms so you won’t do anything to betray yourself.)

You fight and kill for Steve. You try you forget you are wrong inside. You never do.

Over time, you stretch thinner and thinner, like pulled taffy. You’ve been fading for so long you’ve forgotten what it was like to be whole.

At least he doesn’t know. You make sure of that.

Sometimes Steve looks so tired, his Atlas shoulders sagging under the weight of all the lives he couldn’t save. Those times, you pass him your share of the K-rations, nudge your knee against his until his forehead smooths out and his lips quirk up into a smile.

He looks at you like you’re a lock and he’s the key, and he has no idea you’re wearing a mask.

On a train speeding into the mountains, all you can think is that you were not made to be a hero.

Steve is thrown to the ground and you grab his shield. You know you don’t deserve to touch it, this talisman of hope and freedom. The red beneath your skin and in your bones taints the metal, but you hold onto it anyway. You aim your pistol and fire off rounds until a blast knocks your feet out from under you.

For the longest time, you’ve known you would die for him. All along, you’ve been spinning towards this end: inevitable, like gravity.

Steve tries to reach for you. A railing gives way.

You fall. It’s only fitting; you were already a ghost.

***

Darkness, for the longest time.

They tell you Steve is dead. You chant his name until it is ashes in your mouth, until they make you stop.

(Inside your head, you keep on saying his name, as if it won’t make it true.)

They unpick your stitches, tear your seams and make you into something new. Ragged edges are smoothed, all humanity driven from you. A heavy metal limb is fit in the space where your left arm used to be.

You are Sergeant Barnes.

Steve Rogers is (was) your best friend.

You are a killer.

You are —

When they take you from the cryotank, you are ready.

Frost still clinging to your lashes, they put a weapon in your hand. Dimly, you are aware that you learned these skills somewhere else. They meant something, once.

Needlepricks and cold become your life. You lose decades at a time and it confuses you, until they figure out a way to make you stop caring. The chair takes your memories, leaving nothing but white-hot oblivion. You get used to the pain; you learn to expect it.

Now you’re the weapon.

Missions. Targets. Missions. They wipe you over and over, turn you into a pristine blank canvas, all so you can spatter it with red.

You kill and kill, and it is all you know.

And then there is a man and a bridge and a name, and your world splinters.

“But I knew him,” you say, knowing the pain that will come. You don’t care anymore.

They force a bite guard into your mouth and take him from you. You think they might have done it before. You wonder how many times you’ve remembered him.

Pain, then: sharp knives scraping at the inside of your skull. You try to hold onto his face, his voice.

You —

On the helicarrier, the mission speaks to you. He tells you your name is James Buchanan Barnes, that he’s known you his whole life.

His words are full of raw conviction and they reach inside you, breaking apart the lies you have lived. You are a firestorm of violence and death, but it is not all that you are. Once, you were something else.

The realisation sweeps over you, an earthquake that shakes you to your core. It is this:

You have known this man. You have wanted him. You have loved him.

Your soul is tearing apart, shattering. Agony pours forth from your chest in a scream, because it is easier than admitting you know him. So you pin him with your body, lose yourself in the contact of your fist on his skin. Metal cracks bone and splits flesh, and still, he speaks to you as a friend.

He talks to you of lines and ends and you don’t know what he means, but somehow, you know he is a part of you. He always has been.

This time, you don’t fall; he does.

You jump.

***

Images of your old life come thick and fast, bubbling up in your mind like a wellspring.

In the Smithsonian, you stare at black-and-white footage, trying to understand. The man who wears your face is laughing. You know him as a cold-blooded killer, but he smiles at his best friend like it costs him nothing.

Long ago, Steve Rogers was the only thing that tethered you to this earth when it felt like you were floating away. You remember this now.

Time unfurls, a spool of thread with no end. Your life dissolves into bead-strings of memories. Small hands, the knuckles bruised from back-alley scraps. Blond hair like silk under your fingertips. A funeral, a key and a promise to stay with him until the end of the line. A red, white and blue shield that was your compass even when you had no direction.

Steve is what you know. He is what you trust. He is ferris wheel rides and Snickers bars after church and fourth-of-July fireworks on his birthday, their bright gunpowder trails petering out into the night. He is a war you've never stopped fighting.

He is your past, and you wonder whether there is a place for you in his future.

Finally, this:

You knock at a door. The hinges swing, and he is there.

“Buck,” he says, using his nickname for you. The name echoes in your ears, a precious gift. You want to say it, want to know what it would taste like in your mouth.

Instead, you say his name: “Steve.”

He looks at you, a smile growing on his face, sunlight and cotton candy. You stare at his eyes and see your whole heart written there.

Steve was never yours, but you think now, maybe he could be.

His hands grip your shoulders, walk you back into the wall. You feel his body sag against you, muscle uncoiling. He presses his face into your hair.

You love him; you think you always have. You know him like your bones, like the skin that covers your body.

The words burst from your throat, “I want —”

Steve’s eyes are wet, his breathing heavy. “I know,” he says.

Your flesh hand is on his chest, the fabric of his t-shirt soft under your fingertips. His heartbeat throbs, steady against your palm.

His mouth is on your mouth. You are home.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: repeated listens of 'Bend and Not Break' by Dashboard Confessional were pretty much entirely responsible for me writing this.
> 
> Title by Rufio.
> 
> Can also be found on [tumblr](http://glitteratiglue.tumblr.com) (I'll be the one in the corner, crying about Bucky Barnes).


End file.
